Ed Mort, Roy Barr and 'Jesse Owens' go fishing

by jmaloni

Sat, Feb 2nd 2013 07:00 am

by
Mark Daul

Outdoors
in Niagara

Unbelievable.
The real Jesse Owens? The most successful athlete at the 1936 Summer
Olympics? Well, no, but to hear Ed Mort tell his fishing story, you
would think it was the real Jesse Owens that was born 100 years ago.

A few days
ago, Mort and I crossed paths at Johnston's Restaurant in
Ransomville, and it seems we always talk fishing stories or I get
hunting stories from him. He is an avid hunter and outdoorsman who
enjoys what he does, and mostly, I can see the thrill on his face
when he talks about taking his children (grown up now), nephews,
neighborhood kids and, one time with Jesse Owens, fishing.

Mort and
his friend, Roy Barr, are both retired now, but a whole lot of
fishing days were spent together with these two guys through the
years. In more recent years, Mort began taking his outdated VHS video
camera with him to record some of these trips. He's aware of the
new modern digital movie cameras but said he is so used to the big
old camera that he has to support on his shoulder to use, holding his
hands up and tapping his shoulder to show me where it would sit. The
outfit is so outdated; there aren't many VHS players around
anymore, or the old TVs to show them on for that matter.

"But I
have one!" he says. "And the video I have with Jesse catching
fish that day, I play it at least once a year to remember that trip."
Mort loves to watch it and the antics of his fishing partner, Barr,
but in particular, Jesse.

Mort was
also wishing he knew someone that could convert his VHS to a CD so he
could make copies and share it. Do any readers here know how to do
that? Any suggestions email me and let me know.

Mort met
Jesse only a few days before he took him fishing for the first time,
when Jesse walked into Rite Aid in Ransomville. Mort said he had seen
him around town before and Jesse appeared to be always in a
cantankerous mood. But this one day he got into a short conversation
with him, and in that conversation he asked Jesse if he liked
fishing. That caught Jesse's attention and his eyes lit up like the
rising sun as he said, "I love fishin' Boss, but I haven't
fished in years." Mort said, "How about going fishing with me?"
Jesse was excited, and said he doesn't have any hooks or poles, or
anything. "Don't worry 'bout nothin' " Mort told him. "I
have everything."

They made
plans for the next day to go fishing and Barr joined them. Mort and
Barr picked up Jesse at his residence, which was the Heritage Manor
in Ransomville, an assisted living facility, and off they went to a
pond that held crappies, largemouth bass and northern pike. Soon
after getting set up and tossing the live bait out, the action
started and Jesse was catching bass. He was used to catching crappies
all his life and never hooked into bass like these.

A funny
thing, when I asked Mort where this pond was he answered, "Oh, I
have a lot of ponds and creeks around that I fish in." Then I
asked, "Well, where's this one?"

Ha! Good
friend he is, the question was being avoided, he just wasn't going
to tell me for fear I'll tell others. He was right; I would have
told my all Sentinel readers and posted it on my outdoors web site!

The
highlight of this fishing trip came when Jesse caught some nice 3-
and 4-pound largemouth bass, a northern pike, and some crappies. The
crappies were caught after the bass were caught and Jesse, realizing
those bass were his prizes, tossed the smaller crappies back to the
pond. When Mort, holding the camera, asked Jesse, "What do you
think about those bass?" the old guy went into the happy "fish
shuffle," a shuffle with moves that only a teenager could do, never
an 80-year-old, but he did it, I saw it on the video, dust kicking
out from under his feet that looked like smoke! I don't know many
people that love fish and fishing so much as Jesse, but if you ever
saw an 80 year old man catch a bass, fall in love with it, then give
it a big smooch on the lips, and then turn around and say with big
eyes, "this one is going into the skillet!" Now there is one
happy man.

Barr was
the bait master for the day. He put Jesse's bait on the hook,
tossed his line out, took his fish off the hook, and one time Barr
dropped a big bass putting it in the fish bucket, and it almost ended
back in the pond. The day was saved: Jesse jumped out of his chair,
and moved the fish bucket further back from the edge of the water so
Barr couldn't let that happen again.

Apparently,
Jesse was originally from the Deep South, because he kept calling
Mort "Boss" or "Sir." Everything was, "OK Boss," "Yes
Sir," "No Boss," like Rochester always said on the Jack Benny
show many years ago.

When they
finished for the day, Jesse said he wasn't used to fishing with
those 'new' rod and reel things, commenting, "I always fished
with one of those long poles and a string tied to the end." Mort
responded, "I have a brand new one of those in my garage, let me
get it for you." He gave it to him and his eyes lit up like those
two antelopes with night vision goggles that we see in the Geico
commercials on TV. It was a new two-piece, 12-foot bamboo cane pole,
complete with the rigging.

Mort
commented, "I can always picture that pole still sitting in the
corner of his room at the Manor, he was pretty proud of it."

One thing
here, at the end of my story, Mort deserves a big salute for taking
the time to take an elderly person fishing, plus all the lessons
taught by him to all the kids he took the time to teach through the
years, giving them real, hands-on experience. He's my kind of hero.
Remember; "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a
man to fish, and you feed him for life."

Jesse
Owens passed away at age 81.

Suggestions,
comments, email me: [email protected]
or tell the Sentinel. Visit www.OutdoorsNiagara.com
to get the latest fishing reports. Take a kid fishing and an elder
too, like Ed Mort did. Thanks.